The story is writing you,
you are not writing the story.
The poem is your life
your life is not a poem.

Your life is many poems
perhaps an epic
of a wily adventurer

perhaps a sonnet
of a doomed love affair
a sun quickly setting.

Perhaps a poet is writing this
perhaps a failed comic
is stuttering it on a grand stage
as tomatoes rain down.

This poem is not being written
this poem is writing the world.

This world is only stories
this world is only dreams
an intricate bouquet of
milkweed, chicory, Joe Pye weed

that words strain to capture
flickering ghosts on a video screen

without writers there is no world
without a world no writers.

This world is flitting
ephemeral
always on the edge of
vanishing.

This world is eternal
it will outlive us all
all of us who create it.